This is Uber’s second major brand overhaul in less than three years. The Uber logo, in particular, has been tweaked over time, but it was still been an imposing, all-caps monolith. The word UBER was a visual manspread, evoking the members only corporate club from Uber’s roots as an on-demand black car service for Silicon Valley’s elite. The app icon was a confounding, highly controversial circuitboard thing that seemed only tangentially related.

Wolff Olins began its exploration by traveling abroad, to markets like India, to see how the Uber brand lived there. A story began to emerge. Uber messengers rode bikes in 100-degree heat, sweating through on-brand all black uniforms. Many riders and drivers could not read–and the app icon was a confusing mismatch to that Uber word mark. Vehicles would arrive and people wouldn’t know, is this my ride or not? Uber’s Silicon Valley branding didn’t scale globally.
For nearly the past year, Wolff Olins worked with LA-based type design studio MCKL to develop a new logo and custom typeface for the company. Young points out that the old Uber logo evoked the history of cars. “You’re talking about adrenaline, letters that live on a grill. The letters are squareish and hyper masculine,” he says. “But thinking beyond the car, to flying cars, a tut tut in Delhi, or a scooter in L.A., what’s an entity that’s broad enough to be colored by all these modalities that are yet to be defined, rather than constrained…to the automotive space?”

Forest is the young cowboy who traveled the globe (expense account style), watching young Uber boys and girls and the way the logo hung on their clothes. After sampling beers around the globe, Forest didnt just write the word Uber....he hung out with a trendy LA studio and "created a font". I can only imagine the amount of weed and booze involved in fontification.

And a word about our fontificator-Jeremy Mickel

HARDWORKING, METICULOUS, INNOVATIVE
I run MCKL, a type foundry and design studio providing custom typeface design, lettering, and logos. I've created custom fonts for top design firms Pentagram, Leo Burnett, and Turner Duckworth, and logos for Etsy, Kraft, and House Beautiful. Always 'working', but looking for fun projects too. Recently I collaborated with Forest Young to create the new Uber font. Notice my smile below....

It took a year traveling the world--at who knows how much expense. After all that, they came up with... a new font (not to mention the "new" font looks similar to dozens of already existing fonts.). Bravo, Uber! Bravo!

Forest is the young cowboy who traveled the globe (expense account style), watching young Uber boys and girls and the way the logo hung on their clothes. After sampling beers around the globe, Forest didnt just write the word Uber....he hung out with a trendy LA studio and "created a font". I can only imagine the amount of weed and booze involved in fontification.

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Probably quite a bit. Although it seems pretty simple, fontification is actually much more complex than other forms of -ication.

I think it's mandatory for this company to introduce something new every 3 months. I've been on the platform for 14 months and this is the 3rd Logo.

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Meanwhile the cab company i drive for replaced the logo several years ago and switched the name (which is HUGE for a taxi company) and isn't going to change the name or replace the signage on the old taxis...

This is Uber’s second major brand overhaul in less than three years. The Uber logo, in particular, has been tweaked over time, but it was still been an imposing, all-caps monolith. The word UBER was a visual manspread, evoking the members only corporate club from Uber’s roots as an on-demand black car service for Silicon Valley’s elite. The app icon was a confounding, highly controversial circuitboard thing that seemed only tangentially related.

Wolff Olins began its exploration by traveling abroad, to markets like India, to see how the Uber brand lived there. A story began to emerge. Uber messengers rode bikes in 100-degree heat, sweating through on-brand all black uniforms. Many riders and drivers could not read–and the app icon was a confusing mismatch to that Uber word mark. Vehicles would arrive and people wouldn’t know, is this my ride or not? Uber’s Silicon Valley branding didn’t scale globally.
For nearly the past year, Wolff Olins worked with LA-based type design studio MCKL to develop a new logo and custom typeface for the company. Young points out that the old Uber logo evoked the history of cars. “You’re talking about adrenaline, letters that live on a grill. The letters are squareish and hyper masculine,” he says. “But thinking beyond the car, to flying cars, a tut tut in Delhi, or a scooter in L.A., what’s an entity that’s broad enough to be colored by all these modalities that are yet to be defined, rather than constrained…to the automotive space?”

It took a year traveling the world--at who knows how much expense. After all that, they came up with... a new font (not to mention the "new" font looks similar to dozens of already existing fonts.). Bravo, Uber! Bravo!

Click to expand...

Well
The LAST LOGO was inspired by BATHROOM FLOOR TILES while the " "artist" sat on the toilet suffering from alcohol & Cocaine induced headrush . . . .

Sooooo . . .

It also promptly inspired an Uber driver to shoot innocent people in between driving Uber passengers.